


when i run out of rope, you bring me home

by molotovhappyhour



Series: The Force Shall Free Me [10]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Star Wars Setting, M/M, MAERERIED, jedi husbands, married jedi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-06
Updated: 2017-05-06
Packaged: 2018-10-28 21:09:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10839501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/molotovhappyhour/pseuds/molotovhappyhour
Summary: Eren can feel Levi’s breath when he snorts, can see the beginnings of the laugh-lines at the corners of his mouth. “Eren.” Levi’s thumb is ghosting over the curve of his cheekbone, and Eren thinks his body might be melting. Italwaysmelts when Levi does this. “The only one who’s still haunted by Omwat is you.”The Force crystalizes in the way it often does when Eren goes rigid like this. If he were to move, he’s certain that it would break into pieces around him. But the words pile up behind his teeth, dig into his cheeks, cut the lining of his gums—and the Force splits down the middle.It feels like he’s falling through the stars.





	when i run out of rope, you bring me home

**Author's Note:**

> i know i'm two days late but i have a fic so i'm hoping that's acceptable. happy star wars day! may the fourth be with us all.

(“ _eren_ ,” a voice like fresh snow, creaking beneath its own weight. It had seemed to cast shadows in the unsteady light of hyperspace around them, throwing purples and blues against the front console, mingling with the blinking buttons that Eren  _still_  hadn’t quite known what to do with.  “ _we don’t have to do this if you don’t want to_.”

Levi’s eyes had looked the same as always—stormclouds lit from behind by lightning.

“ _i know_ ,” Eren had replied. He’d felt the Force ripple around them, had felt it bend around the nose of their almost too-small freighter, had felt it raise the hairs on his own arms. Or maybe that had just been his nerves, or the turning in his stomach, or the aching behind his eyes. “ _but i want to. i think we should._ ”

He’d paused, twisting his ring around his left finger. The beskar had felt warm against his skin.

And then he’d continued, “ _i think_ i  _should._ ”

Levi had only hummed, and it had been low enough to get lost in the sounds of the ship, but Eren had felt it anyway, just like he’d felt Levi reach out into the space between them with an open hand. Levi’s calluses had been welcome against Eren’s palm, had made all of this  _easier_ , had chased the taste of ozone from behind his teeth.

Eren had squeezed his fingers. Levi had squeezed back.)

Omwat feels exactly the same as it had almost two years before.  

It’s summertime in this hemisphere, and the breeze is warm against his face, pulling at the hems of his robes and the ends of his hair. The whole  _planet_  is still freckled with life in pockets, and the Omwati brush against one another like windchimes in the Force. It  _feels_  beautiful, feels free, feels… like a pressure on his chest, like someone pressing down on his sternum with two hands, with four hands, with three hands and a blade pressed to his throat, and his breath is coming in short,  _unbearable_  gasps—

If Eren listens hard enough, he thinks he can hear himself speaking, and it’s like listening to someone at the end of a tunnel. There’s a  _stain_  on this world, there has to be, and he’s the one that left it there.

Levi’s hand is against his elbow, and he’s warm in the Force, and it’s like breathing in  _stardust_ , fills his lungs to bursting.

“Come on,” Levi says, and his grip is firm, his thumb pressing against a bone that Eren had broken long before he’d become a Jedi. “The village is just over this rise. It’s supposed to be pretty this time of year.” A smile, fleeting against his lips. “Apparently there’s some kind of flower festival? It’s supposed to be an immersive cultural experience.”

Eren’s laugh feels like sand against his tongue, but it’s  _there_ , and that’s what counts. “So  _that’s_  how you got Erwin to let us go for a couple days. ‘Investigation of local cultural development.’ I bet the request was an absolute  _thrill_  to read.”

Levi snorts, leading Eren down the crest of a hill that he’s walked in his dreams, the grass whispering against the underside of their boots. “It was an absolute fucking  _delight_  to read, thank you very much.”

The plains look like an  _ocean_  from here, the light turning into foam when the stalks shift  _just_  the right way. He almost expects golden droplets to be flecked in Levi’s hair when he glances at his face—but the sun does catch in his eyelashes, glittering when he blinks.

The first time they’d come to Omwat should’ve been for something better, Eren’s sure. It should’ve been for something meaningful, something that would leave them both  _breathless_. They should’ve come here so that Eren could’ve seen Levi’s head haloed by grass, could’ve kissed him there, could’ve tasted laughter and fresh air and the chill of barely-dry dew.

They should’ve been able to do a lot of things here.

(Skin flaking against Eren’s throat, the hum of a lightsaber rubbing his skin raw with its energy, the way Levi’s eyes had searched Eren’s face and found nothing but tear-tracks and grass stains, sweat and something sharp and ugly.

And then, “ _come back_.”)

But they hadn’t.

“Hey,” a sigh against his skin inside the Force, the brush of fingers against his cheekbones as they crest over the next hill. “You’re thinking something loudly and it’s interfering with my ability to walk in a straight line.”

Eren blinks and sees a village shaped in a honeycomb, stretched out below them. There’s no hard earth against his spine, nor is there a lightsaber at his pulse—but the inside of his mouth still feels covered with ink, still feels  _slimy_  with it, and even when he swallows he can feel it squirming between his teeth, crawling up his throat, creating tar in his lungs.

But his voice is even when he says, “I’m not thinking at all. I’ve never had a thought in my _life_.”

Levi huffs out a breath, shaking his head in a way that makes the breeze run its fingers through his hair. “Shut up. You _always_ —“ he stops, his eyes tracing the shape of the village-sprawl as his hand drops away from Eren’s elbow. “Are you ready?”

The Omwati honeycomb doesn’t feel anything like the towns he’s used to. It’s not the barely-controlled chaos of Keldabe, or the overwhelming white noise of Coruscant, or the murmur of farming settlements on Qiilura. It’s like... music. It’s soft, and it’s gentle, and when the wind shifts against the base of the hill, he can smell nothing but summer, burning lamps, and _flowers_.

“Yeah,” Eren tells him, “I’m ready.”

This time when they make their way down the hillside, their fingers are laced together, and Eren’s palm is sweating.

The smashed-together scents of flowers are stronger down there, and Eren’s sure he’s never smelled any of them. They’re sweet, like purified nectar, or they’re like ice-melt, fresh and clean. Every flower is a different shape, a different _color,_ a different size, and there are _stalls_ of them just lining the main street. Omwati people are talking with one another in a language that’s all chatter and whistles, tossing feathered, pearlescent hair over their shoulders. Flowers exchange hands, though Eren can see no currency, and children duck between the legs of adults as they chase one another.

Petals scatter beneath their feet as Eren and Levi enter the village proper. And the screaming that Eren had expected doesn’t come.

Wide-pupiled eyes spare them glances, and questions are whistled in their direction. Flowers are held in thin-fingered hands and passed their way, dropped into their palms while smiles sit on lips. Children stop their play only to stop and point at their robes, at their joined hands, at the flowers starting to pile up in either one of their free hands.

It’s too idyllic. It’s not—this isn’t _right_. They’re supposed to be terrified, they’re supposed to _run away_ , because this village had seen—their children had been taken and returned only by the grace of a madman. There’d been a Republic starship docked not even two kilometers away, flattening the grass into a broken crop-circle, and if the Omwati had any sense of self preservation, they’d’ve run away when they saw two Jedi coming over the closest hilltop—

Levi stops their journey with a tug on Eren’s hand, just out of reach of the main square and its chatter-sounds. Flower petals are sticking to the toes of his boots.

The Force is moving around them as Levi looks at him, and the movement of his eyes across Eren’s face leaves the sensation of butterfly kisses along his cheeks, his forehead, his eyelids. Omwati women whistle at one another as they slip past them, tucking one flower each into the folds of both their robes.

Levi whistles his thanks. Eren’s tongue feels too heavy to do the same.

“What’s on your mind?” Eren takes one step forward for each of Levi’s steps backward toward the mouth of an alley that’s lined with carefully positioned flowers, some of their heads wide enough to be dinner plates in another life. It smells like a too-dry greenhouse. Levi unlaces their fingers before he continues, “you’re going to kill your flowers with a grip like that.”

Eren thins his lips, feels heat start to boil against the back of his sternum. “Oh, you know me. I’ve never been to a _flower_ festival before.”

Exasperation tastes like dried beans in his mouth as Levi rolls his eyes, the feeling rattling in the Force like marbles in a jar. He lifts a hand to Eren’s cheek, and his touch is _soft_ —it’s so fucking gentle, and Eren really should be used to it by now. It should stop driving him _crazy_ , should stop setting his stomach into a series of unbelievable knots, should stop making his throat tighten with... _this_.

“The whole reason we came here,” Levi tells him, and—Force bless them _both_ —the palm of his hand smells like sugar-water, “was to see how the kids were doing. To check on things, remember?”

“And to get away from the Temple.” It’s a noble effort, that _airiness_ to his tone. A failure, sure, but noble.

Eren can feel Levi’s breath when he snorts, can see the beginnings of the laugh-lines at the corners of his mouth. “Eren.” Levi’s thumb is ghosting over the curve of his cheekbone, and Eren thinks his body might be melting. It _always_ melts when Levi does this. “The only one who’s still haunted by Omwat is you.”

The Force crystalizes in the way it often does when Eren goes rigid like this. If he were to move, he’s certain that it would break into pieces around him. But the words pile up behind his teeth, dig into his cheeks, cut the lining of his gums—and the Force splits down the middle.

It feels like he’s falling through the stars.

“Everyone should feel like I do,” Eren says, and the flowers are trembling in his hands, his knuckles trying for all the world to go _white_ , to crush the stems inside the circle of his fingers. “There’s a stain here, Levi. How can there—how can no one think about it, living here?”

He can feel Levi’s wedding ring against the side of his face. It’s _warm_ —it’s unbreakable. It’s a fact that makes Eren want to choke.

“I’m going to say it again, slowly, okay?” A winter sky, endless and gray and beautiful, held gently in Levi's irises. Eren drops his eyes to Levi’s lips. “‘The only one still haunted by Omwat is _you_.’” The sentence lingers there, curled up on the dirt path of the alley. And then, “this world is fine. It’s resilient, just like you. And if I could say more than ‘please,’ and ‘thank you,’ in Omwati, I’d say let’s have a second honeymoon here in five years.”

When Eren speaks, it’s like his throat has become no wider than a plastic straw. “I think I’ve heard that second honeymoons come after you’ve been married fifty years.”

One of Levi’s eyebrows arches high, a perfect curve. “That’s only if you have two honeymoons.”

Eren finds himself where he often does—bathing in _light_ , in the Force, in the warmth of the place Levi had carved out there. He can feel gentle touches _everywhere_ , can feel hands on his cheeks, can feel a stroke of fingertips against the back of his neck. It makes his eyes water, because everything still does. One day he might get over that. He hopes that he doesn’t.

“Levi.” Eren’s hand is shaking as he lifts a flower from those gathered in his hands. The petals are colored like a sunrise from the center stretching out—purple to red, red to orange, orange to yellow. He tucks it behind Levi’s ear, and he speaks no louder than trees gossiping to one another in a forest teeming with life. “I’m glad you’re here.”

A pause, and Levi cocks his head, attempting to lean into Eren’s touch, maybe. Or maybe he’s trying to figure out what to say. And then, “of course. Where else would I be?”

Music— _real_ music, not the language of the people here—begins in the square they’d left behind. Laughter follows it, along with whistled phrases that Eren doesn’t know. All of this is inconsequential as Eren stoops to press his lips to Levi’s, as their mouths open against one another, as the Force opens up around them , making lights flicker on the back of Eren’s eyelids. The flower, tucked behind Levi’s ear, drags its petals against Eren’s hair, tickles the shell of his ear.

The flowers fall from Eren’s hands with nothing more than a sigh against the dirt as he holds Levi’s face between his palms. Levi’s tongue washes away the oil between his teeth, chases away the blood that had been clotting on the back of his tongue, breathes something _warm_ back into his lungs.

“I love you,” Levi says, tracing it against Eren’s lips in a way that leaves dampness behind. “You know that, right?”

“I know,” Eren replies, and it’s just as wet. Levi’s flowers join Eren’s between their feet. “I love _you_. You know?”

A smile, their noses brush, and Levi is too gorgeous for words. _This_ is too gorgeous for words—this honeycombed village and its flower festival. The sun, curled up in the center of the petals of the flower tucked behind Levi’s ear. The way Levi’s lips look after they’ve just been kissed.

“I know,” Levi says.

Eren believes him, then. In a moment like this, he’d believe almost anything.

(That night, tucked against Levi’s body in the _almost_ too-small bunk on the freighter in the middle of the Omwati plains, Eren will dream of his failure, like always.

The breeze will be cold against his face, and he will see the Republic ship below him as he stands atop a hill covered in bright green grass. The Omwati settlement will be just over the next rise, and in the dream it will never smell like flowers, nor will he hear the whistled language or the laughter of children. He’ll simply see the ship, the Jedi, and the trembling Omwati children hidden in the shadows there.

But this time, Levi will step up beside him—before he descends the hill, before his voice scalds his windpipe. Clouds won’t gather on the horizon.

“ _i want to come back_ ,” Eren will say when Levi says nothing. He’ll hate the way his too-dark robes sit on his shoulders, he’ll want to claw his way out of his own _skin_ , if only to avoid having to climb down this hill with the taste of ozone on his tongue. “ _i want to come back to you_.”

Levi’s hand will be warm, in this dream, as he takes Eren’s fingers in his own.

Levi’s eyes will be shining, bright and gray and beautiful. The Force will be singing in his ears—or maybe that’s just what Eren’s heart would sound like, if it had a voice. It’s loud enough that he can feel it in his _throat_ , that he can feel it making its way through his chest, that he can feel it press against the soles of his feet.

“ _haven’t you noticed?_ ” Levi’s voice, like freshly fallen snow. “ _you already have._ ”)  


End file.
